Jess Lucero
Social Work
Department Head | Social Work; Professor
Contact Information
Office Location: Logan (MAIN 225G)Phone: +1 435 797 9122
Email: jessica.lucero@usu.edu
Additional Information:
Educational Background
- PhD - Wayne State University - 2012
- MSW - University of Wyoming - 2008
- BSW - University of Wyoming - 2007
Expertise
Neighborhood Effects; Community Capacity Building; Housing Justice; Homelessness; Refugees in the U.S.; Partner Violence; Teen Dating Violence; Community-Engaged Teaching; Program Evaluation; Research Methods; Community Practice; Family Violence
Biography
Dr. Lucero is a Professor and Department Head in the Department of Social Work at Utah State University. Prior to joining the faculty at USU, she completed her doctoral studies at Wayne State University in Detroit and her MSW and BSW at the University of Wyoming. Lucero’s research orientation is very interdisciplinary, and she enjoys exchanging ideas and working to improve social systems with other interdisciplinary scholars, practitioners, and students who are committed to social justice. Dr. Lucero is a nationally recognized scholar in community-based participatory research – she is particularly interested in research that produces real-world recommendations for solving the complex challenges that communities face. Specifically, her community-based research centers on violence prevention and intervention, challenges facing refugees in the U.S., and housing justice issues. Her work in the community does the same. She is a member of the Local Homeless Coordinating Council and board member on Utah’s Balance of State Continuum of Care board. In addition, she is a commissioner for the Logan City Planning Commission and helped found Cache Refugee and Immigrant Connection, a nonprofit that serves New Americans in Cache Valley. She actively involves her students in housing justice work at the local and state level, and she finds great joy in teaching community practice and research methods from a community-engaged perspective in which her students get out in their communities and meet community-identified needs.